Help Me Design Tango Shell32 AVIs

[vertigosity]

I've been wanting to make little copying/deleting/downloading animations to include in the Tango Shell Patcher for myself and anyone else who wants 'em, but I'm lazy and I'm only going to do one style; I'd like to get it right on the first shot and only do something that most everyone will like, or at least not hate. And that might be sorta difficult, since the Tango icons are fully antialiased and use transparency in lots of places... and AVIs don't support any kind of transparency at all aside from a flat "magic color key" - so to get around it, I need to use the least offensive workaround I can find. If you can think of something better, tell me, I could use the help. Feedback!

1. The Blue Box - it looks correct on any theme and lets the icons blend properly against their background, but it puts a big colored box in the middle of the dialog, and doesn't really fit in with a minimalist desktop. I think it's the prettiest solution, but this one's already gotten a negative response, and I'm not that keen on it myself... but it works just as well/badly on every color.

2. The White Box: Same thing as the last choice, but it's in a much more neutral black and white.

3. "Win95"ed: This is the most unconventional (alright, who am I kidding, it's effing WEIRD) of the choices, but it's got a more minimalistic ethos. The 16x16 icons were pretty easy to adjust for 1-bit transparency.

4. Use creative clipping to put the icons directly against the background without a halo: Jaggies so sharp, emo kids will use them to cut themselves.

5. Be cheap, use "halo-space" like everybody else... and anyone who uses a different theme from whatever theme I pick the halo color from can laugh at the poor quality of my work, and a tough black guy can push me onto a sword.

6. Not a poll choice, but I could include a replacement dialog to make those pesky unmatched animations go away :)

Editted: Removed the pictures, I have a pretty clear idea where I'm going with this and I realized my server DOES actually have a monthly bandwidth quota :rofl:

Edited March 29, 2006 by vertigosity

[Mutal1sk]

excellent shell patcher, i vote halo :p

[acedriver]

I voted for halo

[Punio4]

Halo, but with the default clearlooks color...

[plueken]

I support Halo, but perhaps have some other backup avis included that could be Reshacked in by people with incompatible themes. Perhaps either jaggie or the white background as a safe backup?

[HU6H]

Could you combine the halo version with the data-transfer bit, like this:

?

[vertigosity]

I support Halo, but perhaps have some other backup avis included that could be Reshacked in by people with incompatible themes. Perhaps either jaggie or the white background as a safe backup?

If I do an alternate, reshacking would actually be completely unnecessary - just rename and copy from the "alternates" directory to the spots in "resources" where they wind up before running the script, then... wait until Patch Tuesday to change VSes :devil:

Could you combine the halo version with the data-transfer bit, like this:

?

Certainly, that was my idea all along, those are just mockups and I forgot to expose a frame from the "bits" bit before copying what was visible into my donor screenshot.

And I think that will be how I do it... since that seems to be the preference, and it makes a nice smooth effect that with a little tweaking doesn't look too horrible on the wrong background - I even used the win95 classic grey instead of the win2k reddish off-grey in the halo example... including me). Plus, I woke up this morning, checked NW and Slashdot, and smacked myself for forgetting that Animation Shop's default format is MNG, which supports transparency and is a standard/open enough format that something else ought to support it, and that should let me and anyone else who's interested crank out all the alternate colors imaginable. All that drama and mocking up, all to be defeated by a good night's sleep. Yes, the "which Megatokyo character are you" Quizilla toy says I'm Piro :laugh: I'll sit on 'em a few more days to see if my brain comes up with any other useful bits, then whip something up.

[HU6H]

Looks like you've got it sorted. (Y)

Certainly, that was my idea all along, those are just mockups and I forgot to expose a frame from the "bits" bit before copying what was visible into my donor screenshot.

Suuuure it was your idea... *wink*

That's okay, you can take credit for my idea if you feel comfortable doing so. I hope you can sleep at night.

:D :p

[vertigosity]

Mwuahaha! Shamelessly ripping, nothing can stop me :devil:

[Ethere]

Ack, can I change my vote? LOL. I like Halo too, but I accidentally selected white box. Oh well. HALO all the way. Nicely done.

[timmmay]

Hugh1981 nailed it :)

[HU6H]

TIMMAH!

Brisvegas for the win. :yes:

[ooomph]

good job, vertigosity

what's the progress for this ?

[mauseum]

Vertigosity posted in another topic that next week he would be releasing an update with AVI icons so i assume this may be in the next release. :D

On a side note im totaly addicted to tango now. I've grabbed a tango skin for Gaim 2.0 beta 2, theme for thunderbird and for firefox.

All i need now is a tango skin for iTunes :D

I dont know if its healthy :unsure:

Oh i voted Halo btw, just make it the same color scheme as Clearlooks....screw everyone else who doesnt use that vs :D :D :o

I like the idea of folder to folder graphic because no matter where the files are coming from, be it internet, network or folder to folder it is the most generic design layout that covers everything evenly.

Edited March 24, 2006 by ReLapse

[MediaSoldier]

I vote halo because it will fit with clearlooks vs perfect just like ReLapse said. ;)

-skit.

[vertigosity]

good job, vertigosity

what's the progress for this ?

I'm still doing more work manually than I think I ought to, and the output I'm generating is like 15 MB... screw that! I'll play around with it some more until I'm happy with it, and find a compression scheme that works properly. I'd like to get output that's smaller than the XP originals (~20k), because the converted 24-bit-only Gnome and Tango icons are actually usually smaller than the every-single-size-in-every-single-color-depth normal XP icons and that was nifty, but as long as I can get it down to a reasonable size (<1MB) I'll be happy. The Vista Inspirat ones are about 500k, which seems like a reasonable goal.

I like the idea of folder to folder graphic because no matter where the files are coming from, be it internet, network or folder to folder it is the most generic design layout that covers everything evenly.

Heh... I was planning to do a few variations, for the various combinations, but that suggestion truly appeals to the laziness centers of my brain :laugh:

I'll have a Clearlooks-colored halo in by default, and include alternates for one or two others (Classic-2000 and Luna (okay, probably Element) as well... and I'll toss the MNGs (like PNGs, only... multi-er) in the archive so anybody who has something that'll open that can play with 'em themself.

[mauseum]

Lazy is the best i always say! :p

[whizbt77]

which clearlooks are u talking about?

[vertigosity]

which clearlooks are u talking about?

At least as far as dialog background colors go, they're all 239/235/231, at least as far as I can tell.